How to Optimize Your Social Media Marketing

Written by Jeff Bullas - 0 Comments
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As a marketer you have many options with your digital marketing. Social media, email, search engine optimisation, content marketing, visual content marketing and now even mobile marketing. We are still learning and have questions.

One simple question I struggled with early on in my social media marketing journey was “how often should I tweet?.”

Now the burning answer to that question didn’t keep me up at night, but I decided to tweet every 15 minutes for 24 hours a day several years ago. Still do. I have been told by some that it is too frequent. Sometimes stones were thrown in my direction.

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/06/27/8-insights-on-how-to-optimize-your-social-media-marketing-study/#tov8213oVsH4c7VE.99

The Lifespan of Social Media Posts

Posted by:Melissa Leiter

A key component to a comprehensive social media strategy is going to be consistency.  Whicheversocial media platforms you choose, you are going to need to be posting consistently. 

So just how consistent do you need to be on those social media platforms? Well, that question is best answered if we break down the overall lifespan of social media posts on different platforms.

Today I’m going to provide some insights on just how long your comments, questions, photos, videos, etc. last on social networks:

Twitter: I’ve seen people quote 18 minutes, a couple of seconds and several hours.  Whether or not one of those times is the most appropriate is not the point. What you should takeaway is that this is probably the most cutthroat platform where your posts disappear the fastest. The lifespan of your tweets largely depends on the amount of people your followers are following.  If you are one of 3,000, your tweet is probably going to be closer to that couple of seconds lifespan. Keep it short and sweet and attention-grabbing to make sure your tweet gets seen and gets engagement.

http://goo.gl/0HTSbV

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Regulation and Enterprise Social Media

Everyone's heard the saying, "opposites attract," but do they last forever? As a culture, we love rooting for hopeless relationships—whether in books, movies, or reality. The naïve pig and prolific spider in, “Charlotte’s Web.” The wealthy, obnoxious woman and struggling carpenter in the movie, “Overboard.” Oil and vinegar or dry wine and steak. We close the book and leave the movie imagining happily ever after. We enjoy contrasting tastes that complement one another. In other real-life scenarios, it’s much more complicated.

Take the connection between regulation and compliance and enterprise social media. They seemingly repel one another. But by embracing differences and making compromises, this relationship can work harmoniously. And we don’t have to dream about it.

That’s why we invited Joanna Belbey, Social Media and Compliance Specialist for Actiance, Inc., Tom Chernaik, CEO of Command Post, and DeShelia Spann, who directs employee advocacy initiatives as the Digital Marketing Manager at Eaton, to steer us in our exclusive, live webinar: Charting the Course for Enterprise Social Media in a Regulated Industry. Join us to explore enterprise social media strategy for regulated businesses on
 Tuesday, June 24, at 12 p.m. EST / 9 a.m. PST.

http://goo.gl/kUefpm

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5 Steps to Boosting Website Traffic with User Generated Content

Written by Colleen Horan - 0 Comments

The Internet has undeniably become more social, visual and viral. But to date almost all of that evolution has occurred on social networks.

In the age of Big Data and eCommerce, where there is a real, measurable business benefit to “owning” your online audience, brands are re-thinking the marketing tactic of putting their social efforts almost exclusively into social networks that control the data, reach and audience.

Today, brands are attempting to lure customers and potential customers back to their websites with rich social experiences, like the photo- and video-sharing that has made networks like Vine and Instagram so popular.

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/06/16/5-steps-to-boosting-website-traffic-with-user-generated-content/#ti3BQqHX2dbudhOC.99

Add Fuel to Your Social Media Marketing with Content Curation

If your company does not practice content curation, your social media presence is likely overly brand-focused.  Making your social media marketing all about your brand is a major faux pas; it runs
contrary to the ethos of community-based social media—where authentic engagement and an active exchange of ideas are de rigueur. You should refrain from being overly “salesy” in your social media marketing.  Your social networks hold more value than simply acting as content distribution channels. Direct sales solicitation is not welcome on social media, and your social audience will indeed unfollow and unlike you for interruptive messaging.  Only talking about yourself and sharing your own content is not social. Ensure that your social media marketing is not off-putting by offering value with high-quality content curation.

Content curation can significantly broaden your social audience. To leverage the power of content curation, you must seek out, find, curate and share highly relevant, industry-leading content across your social networks—including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn at a minimum.  High-quality content curation is valuable to others and can ramp up your social lead generation. 

http://goo.gl/8QClAv

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SEC Guidance on How Financial Advisors Can Use Social Media

Recently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a guidance to help financial advisors determine when it is appropriate to use social media. The guidance helps to clarify Section 206(4)-1(a)(1) of the Investment Advisors Act of 1940. This section of the rule makes it unlawful to publish, circulate, or distribute any advertisement that refers, direct or indirectly, to any testimonial of any kind concerning the advisor or concerning any advice, analysis, report, or other service rendered by the advisor (i.e. the "Testimonial Rule").  Even though the SEC has not specifically defined "testimonial," they have interpreted it to mean "a statement of a client's experience with, or endorsement of, an investment advisor." According toInstitutional Asset Manager, whether public commentary on a social media site is a testimonial depends upon all of the facts and circumstances surrounding the particular situation.

http://socialmediatoday.com/bradfriedman/2477796/new-sec-guidance-how-financial-advisors-can-use-social-media

Prior to this guidance, the SEC did say it was acceptable for an advisor to publish an article from an unbiased third party regarding the advisor's performance unless it includes a statement of a client's experience with, or endorsement of, the advisor. In addition, the SEC has permitted advisor's advertisements that include a partial list of advisor's clients that merely identifies the clients and nothing more.

Social Media for Your Business: Finding the Time

The most common excuse for small businesses not being active on social media is almost always that there isn't enough time. Hey, I can relate. Running a small business usually means working 80-100 hours each week, and that's just taking care of the everyday run-of-the-mill stuff to make sure that you'll still be open for business next week.

There are only two primary options for getting your social presence out there: do it yourself or hire someone else. Having an employee, or a group of employees, on your staff to handle social media marketing kind of falls under both categories, but there are glaring problems with that scenario. First, if you don't already know what to do yourself, how will you train anyone else to do it? Second, the costs involved with hiring people aren't small, and once they're hired you have to go back to how to train them.

Outsourcing your SM marketing isn't a bad option, but then you're dealing with an unknown third party. That could be potentially dangerous for your brand if things don't go well. So then you're back to where you started: either do it yourself or don't do it at all. If I can give you some advice, it would be this - not doing it at all isn't an option either. The world is different now whether you like it or not, so really your two options come down to getting on the social media train or closing up shop.

http://socialmediatoday.com/sendible/2454571/social-media-your-business-finding-time

2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

By Michael Stelzner
Published May 19, 2014 

Do you wonder how your peers are using social media?

Wondering if you should focus on Instagram or podcasting, or put more effort into blogging?

In our sixth annual social media study, more than 2800 marketers reveal where they focus their social media activities, which social tactics are most effective and how content plays a role into their social media marketing.

Watch this video overview:

http://goo.gl/fKaM5j

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9 Fresh and Effective Ideas for Your Social Media and Content Marketing Campaigns

Audiences are just drowning in horrible content, even after Google and its Hummingbird changes. Worse yet, people (and companies) are still using methods that are dated and maybe at most one or two ways to market their content. 

Let’s think about this for a minute. Brands today have more options for content marketing, such as investing in social media strategies, blogs, eBooks, videos, and much more. If you’re smart, you’ll know that the more ways you market your content, the better the results you want will be.  This means consistently coming up with lots of content marketing ideas in order to get more engaging content out there. 

Brain burnt out from trying to find fresh and effective ideas? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. 

http://goo.gl/FYNX22

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5 Ways to Increase Engagement With Your Target Audience

Written by Kate Prince - 3 Comments

Are you just chasing numbers and forgetting what really matters?

Many marketers busy themselves growing lists, fans and followers, but ignore a metric that creates mobs of raving supporters. It’s called engagement, and it can boost your brand lift by over 300%.

As 55% of readers spend less than 15 seconds actively on a page (Chartbeat, March 2014) we need to move away from advertising influenced metrics, such as clicks and page views, and start measuring the impact of our social media campaigns with more sophisticated metrics, such as activity and reach.

Valuable audience engagement is all about QUALITY over QUANTITY.

Too many of us skip ahead to the fun part and underestimate the importance of fundamentally engaging your target audience first – don’t wait for them to find you!

In this post, I’m outlining 5 ways to increase engagement with your target audience, to create more value for you and your readers and viewers.

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/05/14/55-ways-to-increase-engagement-with-your-target-audience/#JZzxgabAvjGZeg23.99

Social Media and Its Influence on the Legal Realm

Posted by:Kayla Minguez

There are certain ethical boundaries that define the law industry, and some people may argue social media hasn’t exactly made ethical dilemmas easy to solve.  Keep reading to learn about how social media has impacted legal proceedings, and what that means for legal experts or even members of a jury.

Getting Too Friendly on Facebook

It may not ordinarily seem like a conflict of interest for a lawyer to accept a friend request from a local judge on Facebook, but if those two legal experts are together in a courtroom to present or hear a case, you can quickly see the clear conflict. This situation actually happened in North Carolina, causing a judicial ethics advisory committee in Florida to issue an opinion that it’s okay for judges or lawyers to “like” each other’s pages, but not actually become friends on Facebook.

http://socialmediatoday.com/kayla-minguez/2410876/social-media-and-its-influence-legal-realm

How to Blog : Should Your Blog Shut Down Comments?

By Michael Stelzner
Published May 9, 2014 

Do you like to get comments on your blog?

Have you ever wondered if you should allow comments or shut them down?

To learn about why blog comments are valuable to your business, I interview Mark Schaefer and Tim McDonald for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.

More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Mark Schaefer, who is a college educator and author of four books. His blog is called Grow and his latest book isSocial Media Explained. Tim McDonald is the director of community at the Huffington Post, founder of My Community Manager and a member of the No Kid Hungry Social Council.

http://goo.gl/FMpLeJ

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Social Media Around the World

by JC Giraldo

This is part III of a blog series in which my mentor Natascha Thomson and I try to provide answers to this question by surveying our world-wide networks:

How do social media styles differ by culture/nation?

Note: We make no claim that the results of our informal survey are statistically relevant, but they represent insights from people who use social media regularly for business.

We asked the following questions:

1. In your country (or region or culture, if you prefer), how do the majority of people view social media?
2. What would you say is a unique characteristic of social media usage in your culture?

THE RESULTS PART III

http://goo.gl/Y99Oqk

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Critical Science of Social Media Influence: 10 Psychology Lessons to Make Your Posts More Persuasive

Posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2014

Written by Kevan Lee

What are we really talking about when we’re talking about conversions?

Persuasion, right? Influence.

When we talk about conversions, we are—most of the time—discussing ways we can be more persuasive, more influential. We’re interested in meeting the needs of customers, fans, and followers and doing so in a way that truly speaks to them.

So how can you persuade—i.e., convert—better?

Perhaps not surprisingly, the hacks for conversion and persuasion begin with psychology. Understanding why someone clicks or why they retweet requires you to look at the way the person is wired, the way we are all wired. To understand persuasion and social media influence, to get at the heart of conversion and likes, it helps to understand how your audience thinks and feels. Here’s a primer.

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The Social Spark: 3 Sources for Social Media Success

Keywords: 

The world of social media is constantly evolving, and it's important for users to stay ahead of the curve in working towards profile optimization, all while avoiding being caught by social shock (such as The Facebook Organic Reach Crisis).

As a social media strategist, it's not only my role to manage social media platforms, but to stay updated on the daily changes the industry encounters. How are others are utilizing platform updates to their advantage?

With my daily consumption of tweets, news feeds, and blog posts, I've encountered a wide range of tips and guides all showcasing a unique insight to the key to success in social media. 

http://socialmediatoday.com/deanna-baisden/2349621/social-spark-3-sources-social-media-success?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=hootsuite_tweets

SMToolbox: Getting the Most Out of HootSuite - An Expert's View

If you are in social media, you will be aware of HootSuite. It is arguably the most widely used social media management tool globally, with over 8 million users. This week in the SMToolbox, I was privileged to interview Hootsuite guru Mike Allton to get his take on HootSuite and why it is so popular. Along the way he shared his top tips and his favorite HootSuite apps.

HootSuite: The Elevator Pitch

In HootSuite’s own words, the tool “helps teams execute social media strategies across multiple social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ Pages from one secure web-based social relationship platform.” There is a free version of the software, a Pro version and an increasingly popular Enterprise version.

The numbers behind HootSuite are impressive. In addition to 8 million users, there are over 1,000 enterprise customers, and there is a growing app directory with over 1 million app installs. The company is still growing at over 150 percent year-on-year, has just been ranked top for customer service and it has a new partnership with Brandwatch. We reviewed Brandwatch’s sophisticated social analytics software last week here on SMToolbox.

http://socialmediatoday.com/SMToolbox/Hootsuite-expert-s-view-Mike-Allton

Email and Porn included? Nice to see some honesty in reporting social media for a change.

Capturing the Attention of Consumers in the Fragmented Mobile Social Landscape

We all know that mobile social is kind of a big deal.

On average, consumers are spending 37 minutes daily on social media, which is a greater amount of time spent doing any other activity on the Internet – email and porn included.

Of those 37 minutes, 60 percent of that time – or 22.2 minutes – is spent on mobile social media.

There, probably enough said.

http://socialmediatoday.com/rgbsocial/2208406/capturing-attention-consumers-fragmented-mobile-social-landscape

How to Build Your Personal Brand with Social Media

In a world where social media rules, we have all become brands. Everything that we say and do on social channels ultimately tells others what we are all about. Consider social media activity the 2.0 version of nonverbal communication. Everything you Like, Share, Comment on, Pin or Retweet expresses things about you. This can be both a blessing and a curse especially when you want to establish yourself as a thought leader or credible resource in a particular industry. You have to be aware that every public online action you take helps build your personal brand. So, how can you be sure you are building a good personal brand with social media? Here are a few ways that I would like to share based on my own personal hits and misses.

http://socialmediatoday.com/nate-mendenhall/2196576/how-build-your-personal-brand-social-media

The Facebook Fraud and What It Means for Nonprofits

2014 has been off to a good start for Facebook so far. Last week, it was announced that founder Mark Zuckerberg was the top philanthropist in 2013, having donated almost $1 billion. Their fourth-quarter earnings beat expectations, with revenue increasing from $1.59 billion to $2.59 billion. They even shook off a Princeton study that estimated usage would drop by 80% by 2017.

However, users (specifically brand marketers) are becoming increasingly vocal about the frustration they’re experiencing. Report after report shows that organic post visibility is dropping precipitously, forcing marketers to invest in paid advertisements and promoted posts. This is problematic for nonprofits and associations, whose budgets are already tight.

Now it seems that even those promoted posts may not be reaching the intended audience. A post from video blogger Derek Muller of Veritasium is making the rounds on social media with a damning study on Facebook’s advertising model. It’s well worth the 9 minute playtime:

http://socialmediatoday.com/sashattuck/2170526/facebook-fraud-and-what-it-means-nonprofits

Facebook Facts you Need to Know in 2014

Love or hate Facebook….it is embedded. It was just over a decade on February 4, 2004 that “thefacebook.com” was launched with no grand plans for world domination. It was only meant to be a website for college students to meet online. The platform didn’t carry ads, was not built for mobile and had no monetisation model. In 2014 it is “the” default social network for everyone from teenagers to octogenarians. It is also not just a social network for connecting to friends and family but a marketers “go to” tool to target brand personas and reach a company’s target audience. Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/02/11/facebook-facts-need-know-2014/#RCFVJdh8TptviZrF.99